The Oxygen team are overjoyed at the response and want to thank everyone who took part.
Every wallpaper will be available in several screen resolutions for both wide and regular display.
We believe the selection provides a beautiful, colorful, peaceful yet not distracting collection of free wallpapers. We're sure you'll find one you like.

All of these wallpapers are being released under the LGPL version 3 license. For more insights by the jury, check Riccardo's blog.

Frist the one suposedly mine is not mine at all its realy from Jim (code poet).
Secondly wen we strated and it was originaly my idea IIRC, the iddea was to device a way to get some more wallpapers to had to the ones I had made, and Ken 2, ken is a kick ass photografer and we are lucky to have him.
In the end none of my wallpapers made the final cut :)
Ahs for riccardo he went in a taking pictures frenzy he worked like hell and honestly only in the end did I realized so many of his pictures made the final cut. I meen After watching 2000 pictures they all look abit the same.
You can beleve us that we tried our best to get the best pictures we could, im very soory for all the people that did not made the final cut, but we tried to be very honest.
Example on of the images that end up on the final 15 that is from ricardo is only there couse we got no anser from the outhor of the picture that did so we wre not sure we could lgpl it and has ricardo was the next runer up....

I don't think you guys need to defend yourself. If it were a serious contest with huge prizes to be won, people might have a point. As it is, you asked for contributions to select a set of stunning images to use as backgrounds. I think the artists community around KDE has every right to participate in that. In fact: I am very glad they do!

First of all, to get things straight, KDE 4 will have the best artwork, of any KDE so far! This is really great work! These pictures are overall pretty awesome! And I mean it, despite my comments below!! It's critics on a high level ;)

For the next contest I'd like to make some suggestions however to keep in mind:

- Out of those 15 pictures, 10 are nature shots and of those 7 are leaves, also only 2 are non photographic pictures. IMHO it would have been better to have a bit more diversion, thematically. Maybe another non photographic background in the style of EOS could still be added.

- I'm personally a bit bored of those overdone macro shots, like Red Leaf or Fresh Morning. I think it's sometimes a bit too much macro, bluring the background a bit too much, losing cohesion between the macro object and the background. It's as always, less is often more ;)

- Green Concentration is IMHO a bit too intensive for a default background picture, it's pretty blinding if have fullscreen...

please, my it be "Colorado Farm Oil Paint". I always have problems with bright backgrounds making the icons less readable, and this one is dark. feels darker than just about all of them, in any case. it also looks stunning, which helps.

if it has to be abstract than I sure hope it's "Emotion", because I don't like "Eos" at all.

the rest of the wallpapers would be OK, I just think their nothing special.

these are all amazing. Also the work of the top 100 artists should be posted later and available for download too. I mean the top 100 wallpapers!
O and the down part is that these things just add to the unrest to see the finished KDE4. I really can't wait anymore :( it's just so hard!

The goal of the default wallpaper graphic is to be unobrtusive and allow the items on the desktop to be seen. It should not hinder the overview of user's desktop.

While a solid color background seems to be a perfect fit based on the goal above, the wallpaper also shouldn't be completely dull and boring.

It is very likely that a user will customize a wallpaper and even go against the outlined goal, putting a photo of his beloved one as the background. The default graphic however should only be some sort of abstract shape with low contrast of the texture. Abstract shapes work best for two reasons. First it doesn't make the human visual system focus on the background, but the items on top of it and also it avoids cultural or religious specifics. Using a picture of an animal might have such implications and in worst case scenario insult the user."

Why ? You can set a wallpapers for each screen, which IMO looks better. My problem is that the slideshow screensaver of kde3 cannot handle the two screens of xinerama as two. So the slideshow is just unuseable and ugly.